The 2012 Joshua Tree Fine Art Festival is coming up next weekend.  The dates are Friday, April 6 to Sunday, April 8.  I’m excited to be returning and catching up with old friends.  This is the first art festival I ever did and so returning is like a homecoming.  The festival is at the Oasis Visitor Center in Twentynine Palms, CA.  The hours are 9:00 to 5:00.  Come on out and see some great art.

I’ll be showing some old favorites along with some new photographs I’m very excited about.  As far as the old favorites go I’m planning on showing Virgin River and the Watchman from Zion National Park.

This has proved to be my most popular photograph and has won awards.  It was captured on Thanksgiving day back in 2008.  I was in Zion with my wife and daughter for the Thanksgiving weekend.  I slipped out for this sunset and caught a beauty.  Beginners luck!  I’ve returned many times but never with light this good.  (By the way, to get a better view of the photographs you can enlarge them by clicking on them.)

To go along with the Watchman is another photograph taken that same weekend along the Riverside Walk to the Gateway to the Narrows.  When my family is with me we always do this walk.  It’s our favorite – for obvious reasons.

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Photography is all about light.  In nature photography we study the weather, time of day and time of year to learn all we can about light.  And the more diligently we study light the more it pays off.

One of my favorite types of light is alpenglow.  There is a bit of confusion about what it is.  Many people think it’s the sunlight shining on the mountain peaks during sunset, after the valleys below are in shadow.  And while this is beautiful, that’s not it.

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Sunset, Owens Valley

Originally uploaded by Ralph Nordstrom

The Eastern Sierra are known for their incredible cuinstes.  We got this one during the workshop.

I arrived in Death Valley the day prior to the start of the workshop.  There were a couple of locations I wanted to explore and you don’t get a chance to do that during the hectic pace of the workshop.

One location that was becoming more and more interesting the more I learned about it was Golden Canyon.  It is literally on the back side of Zabriskie Point.  In fact, the upper end of Golden Canyon passes beneath Manley Beacon, the iconic formation so often photographed from Zabriskie Point.

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There’s a lot of talk amongst photographers about shooting in the golden hours – around sunrise and sunset.  There’s no disagreement that the light is wonderful at those times of the day.  The low angle gives excitingly long shadows and the fact that the sunlight has to travel through more of our atmosphere means it’s a bit softer and a lot warmer.

So you often find a lot of photographers lining up for sunset shoots at iconic locations.  The bridge over the Virgin River in Zion is a perfect example.  I’ve got to admit, I love to shoot sunsets from the bridge myself.  Most photographers will arrive early and stay about 20 minutes after the sun disappears below the horizon at which time the pack up and head off to dinner.

I like to stay till I can’t shoot any more.  The light show isn’t over by any means when the glow on the clouds fades.  It’s just a lot more subtle.  As the light fades exposure times increase and when you get up to 30 seconds then ISO starts to bump up.

Why do I like this light so much?  Well, because there is so much going on.  Many complex and intricate things are going on in the sky above.  You end up getting a delicate play of warm and cool light.  Everything is enveloped in a quiet, soft luminance.  It can be a magic unlike any other time of day.

I was shooting on that famous bridge in Zion back in November.  If it hadn’t been for my two friends shooting with me I would have been the only one on the bridge.  Everyone else had long gone.  I was shooting HDR, 5 bracketed shots, something I’ve found to be very effective (don’t forget, the sky stays bright long after the sun disappears).  Each shot was varied by 1 1/3 stop.  Post processing consisted of Photomatix and a little Light Room.  Here’s what I got.  (You can click on these images to enlarge them.)

Watchman at Twilight

A few weeks before I took this Zion twilight shot I found myself in Death Valley on the Mesquite Flats Dunes, again at sunset.  I set up on this one composition and shot it for about an hour and a half.  Many people like the stark contrast created by the sun playing on the undulating surfaces of the dunes.  I like it too.

Mesquite Dunes Sunset

 But a while later comes the real show, at least for my money.  The play of colors becomes outrageous with reds, magentas, purples, oranges, yellows and blues.  And I love the forms and textures of the sand.  It’s truly amazing.

Mesquite Dunes Twilight

So for my money, you’ll see me out there (usually by myself) until I can’t shoot any more.  Hey, why don’t you join me and see for yourself.

Then and only then I’ll pack up my gear and head off for dinner.

Note:  All of the above photographs are HDR, not just Zion.

To see more of my work go to Ralph Nordstrom Photography.

Last night marked two months since the fire came through our ‘back yard.’  Since then we’ve had about four inches of rain.  In fact, there was more rain in one storm than all of last year.  As a result the scorched hills are starting to turn green.  We’ve seen crop duster planes flying over the foothills and mountains seeding the slopes to help control erosion.

Last night’s sunset was spectacular!

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What I’d like to do is keep a journal of the steps I go through and the decisions I make when creating the Zion Canyon print.  It was shot on 11/24/2007 near the Great White Thrown turnout.  I was there the day before closer to sunset and realized this shot needed to be taken about an hour earlier.  So I came back at 4:15 the following day.  The shot required both stitching (vertical panorama shots) and HDR (three exposures bracketed at +/- 1 stop) for a total of six shots.

The image was shot down by the Virgin River although it’s not in the picture.  The foreground is a meadow in the shade with two cottonwood trees.  The middle ground is a Navajo sandstone cliff jutting in from the right, also in the shade.  The background is a tall cliff, also Navajo sandstone, that is still catching some sunlight.  The sky is cloudless and blue.

Here then are the steps I’m going through to take these six shots from RAW to a finished print.  It will probably not be completed today.  Sorry I can’t show the before and after of each step.  That would be interesting.

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